Oldies? What? →[More:]Rock and roll is built on innovation and rebellion and that's a big part of what's kept it on the cutting edge of popular culture all these years. An unfortunate by product of that is that once one movement usurps another, too often what came before is relegated to the nostalgia scrap-heap of 'oldies,' as if the work no longer had value or the artsists themselves had nothing more to give. Even a cursory look at the artists I'm going to talk about proves otherwise. These supposedly irrelevant performers had plenty more growing to do, plus their age and experience offers them perspectives that younger artists simply don't have.

First up, Gary "U.S." Bonds. Bonds created some of the most wildly raucous party R&B of the early '60's, gems like 'Quarter To Three' and 'New Orleans', stompers that continue to be covered to this day, by Bruce Springsteen and Joan Jett, among others. It was Springsteen and his guitarist Steve Van Zandt who discovered Bonds living in poverty years after the hits stopped and they decided to put together a comeback album for him. The album not only contained great songs like the Bonds/Springsteen duet on the cajun classic 'Jole Blon' and the immortal 'This Little Girl', which actually put Gary back on the charts for a while.

Then there's the case of Mitch Ryder, the great blue-eyed soulster out of Detroit who gave the world 'Jenny Take a Ride' and 'Sock It To Me, Baby'. After the British Invasion and psychedlia hit, Ryder's manager made the disastrous decision to ditch his crack backup band the Detroit Wheels and try to remake him as a Vegas crooner. When that failed, Mitch wandered in the wilderness awhile, although in '69 he unleashed both the great city-dweller lament 'Fun City,' and a fine cover of Eddie Floyd's 'Raise Your Hand' (from the album The Detroit-Memphis Experiment, recorded with Stax-Volt house band Booker T & the MG's). A few years later, Ryder took the radical step of forming the hard-rock outfit Detroit, who recorded one excellent album, the highlight of which was a thunderous cover of the Velvet Underground's 'Rock and Roll.' Upon hearing it, Lou Reed supposedly said "That's what I wanted the song to sound like in the first place." Due to Springsteen and others using his songs as live encores, interest in Ryder increased and in the early '80's he resurfaced yet again with a John Cougar Mellencamp produced cover of Prince's 'When You Were Mine.'

Consider also the case of Ronnie Spector, who with the Ronnettes was the queen of the girl group sound. Classics like 'Be My Baby,' and 'Walking In The Rain,' showed that Ronnie was one of the primary bricks in the Wall Of sound. As she spent years imprioned in her marraige to her producer (known lunatic and probable murderer) Phil Spector, interest in her was kept alive by such diverse admirers as Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, Joey Ramone and Eddie Money (she did a memorable backup vocal on his 'Take Me Home Tonight'). In the late nineties she resurfaced with a phenomenal cover of the Ramones 'She Talks To Rainbows,' and one of Brian Wilson's 'Don't Worry, Baby,' (originally written for her as it turns out, but Wilson wound up keeping it and turning it into a Beach Boys classic instead). And she kept the momentum going into the new millenium with her album Last Of The Rock Stars, featuring the terrific 'Girl From The Ghetto.' (Ronnie's autobiography, Be My Baby is a terrific read that I can't rccomend enough, by the way).

Then there's the swaggering, slicked-back, sharkskin-clad King of Bronx Itailian Doo-Wop, Dion. In the early '60's he gave us 'The Wanderer,' 'Runaround Sue' (I fully stipulate that those two songs back-to-back may be one of the most obvious examples of male chauvinism in rock history, but they're still great songs), and 'Little Diane,' (probably the best use of the kazoo in rock history) songs that swaggered like no others. When his moment passed, Dion wandered through obscurity and addiction for a few decades (interest in him kept alive by author Richard Price, among others), he resurfaced in the 1980's with a marvelous uptempo cover of Tom Waits' 'The Heart Of Saturday Night,' and an extraordinary pair of songs that confront a topic rarely discussed in youth-obsessed rock and roll-aging; the poignant 'I Used To Be A Brooklyn Dodger' and the strutting 'King Of The New York Streets.'

Finally, there's the saga of Rick Nelson. When Ozzie & Harriet's youngest son caught the bug, it was a sign that rock and roll had truly arrived. Too often lumped in with lame teen idols of the Bobby Rydell/Frankie Avalon variety, Ricky was another species entirely. Jimmy Page (among others) credits James Burton's guitar solo on Rick's 'Hello Mary Lou,' with making him want to become a professional guitarist. John Fogerty of Creedence also cites Nelson as a huge influence. In the early seventies, Rick played an 'oldies' show at Madison Square Garden. he showed up with shoulder-legnth hair and snuck a few new country-rock songs into his set of old hits. Some of the audience jeered and booed. He wrote the song 'Garden Party,', the lyrics of which sum upo what I'm getting at better than I ever could:

If you gotta play garden parties
I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang
I'd rather drive a truck...

Anyway, I worked really hard on this post. I hope you enjoy it and more importantly, the songs.